In the mid-to-late 19th century, as now, students were subjected to examinations at the end of the school year. These were oral recitations evaluated by the Prudential, or principal, of each district. Those students who protested in the first year of MCAS had predecessors in 1868: According to that year’s report: “Almost all the large boys were absent from the examination.”

In methodology, the expected approach was to teach recitation from the text and to drill facts. However, the teacher evaluations published in the annual reports show that some Prudentials recognized the limits of this approach and the effectiveness of other methods. Miss Graves of District #1 was criticized for “telling [the students] what they ought to have found for themselves.” On the other hand, “Mr. Sedley’s methods have proved a complete success, and are worthy of imitation by other teachers. Every recitation is made interesting by explanations and by questions well calculated to wake up the ideas of the pupils and make their studies a pleasure, instead of mere drudgery.”

In 1881 the superintendent found that “some teachers fail because they cannot interest their pupils in the work before them,” and he blames this primarily on “the two (sic) rigid adherence to the text-book, thus making the subject matter dry and distasteful.” He goes on to say, “Let the teacher bring into the school-room morsels which she gathers in her reading or her daily life and which have application to the subject in hand.” The majority of teachers seem to have been young single women, with no teaching experience; some were barely educated themselves. One Prudential complained in 1868, “ It is by no means an uncommon thing for the Committee to have the mortification of seeing teachers call out classes and hear recitations in what they don’t themselves understand, and don’t try to.” By 1884 Harvard had at least one teacher who had actually had training: “Eliza Fuzzard is a member of the Bridgewater Normal school, and our experience with her is evidence of the success of the Normal school training.”

Spelling and geography books were often updated. In 1881 the superintendent writes that he recommends a change in spelling books. His advice seems very enlightened for his time: “I would advise the choice of a book compiled with special reference to written exercises. It is in the form of writing that spelling has its practical application.”

In 1868 the committee “felt it to be a necessity to bring Guyot’s Geographies into the Harvard Schools by reason of new discoveries and political re-arrangements since the geographies now in our schools were published.” (This writer felt the relevance of this just the other day when I learned from my nine-year-old granddaughter that the Antarctic Ocean of my childhood has been replaced by the Southern Ocean.)

Much of the superintendent’s report in 1884 talks of repairs needed to the schools—the mortar falling off the back wall of Number 7; the fences around the yards of Numbers 2 and 4 in need of repairing to “maintain the peace of the neighborhood.” The same report talks about a law taxing all residents in order for the towns to furnish school books and schools supplies. (Any parent with a late summer bill from Staples can tell you the second part of that law no longer exists!) It is interesting to see that even then, Harvard ranked low on the amount spent per pupil: “In the list showing how much money is raised per scholars by towns in the state, beginning with the highest sum, Harvard is the 136th” (out of 346 towns).

It was apparently more acceptable then than now to openly criticize parents, though the sentiments may be the same today. In 1881 the superintendent remarks, ”We can but think if the parents would exert themselves a little to speak a good word for their teacher, instead of, as is often the case, speaking in a slighting or disparaging manner, it would be very much to their advantage.” He goes on to admonish: “I have found in more instances than one that it is a common practice for the parents to allow, yes, encourage their children to stay at home, because the teacher for some reason failed to do what they thought should be done.”

In 1868 Prudential Alonzo Willard writes: “In seeking for teachers, it is the dictate of wisdom not to be satisfied with instructors who merely are accurate in the school studies, but to prefer those who love scholarship so much as to be great readers and students of art and literature and science. In truth it is to be hoped that the time will come when we shall not, for a moment, think of employing any teacher who does not come into the last-named class.”

That time has long since come to Harvard schools.